New blog stuff

Hey ho! Here I am putting off doing some work so I thought I’d waste time by playing about with the ol’ blog.
Couple of changes, some more noticable than others. First one should be pretty obvious if you were to scroll down, and that’s the inclusion of two tag clouds. It’s probably the only thing lacking from Blogger when compared to WordPress is a native tag cloud implementation (oh, and trackable statistics, but that’s really for us admin folks). Of course there are a couple of scripts out there that can parse the standard “labels” list; I probably could have knocked up something myself, but why reinvent the wheel??

Yeah, so I found two scripts out there that can do the job, and not wanting to commit to one just yet, I’ve thrown them both into the sidebar to see what they look like. Also, I’m trying out the (semi-)new blogger widget, the poll widget! Yeah, so it would be great if you could place your vote and after a bit of time I’ll commit to a cloud and remove the rather lame looking current list.

Another change is the inclusion of the twitter badge. I’ve been aware of the micro-blogging tool but had been hesitant to adopt it. Saying that, I was over on Major Nelson’s site(Xbox live updates + other news) and noticed he had the twitter badge up and running and thought it actually looked quite neat. It’s very much like the “status” feature on facebook, and I usually try and have a bit of fun with that, so thought I’d chuck it on the blog as well – in a small effort to try and get me back into the blogging routine. I have a few more interesting pics taken on my phone which I may well share, but the quality’s not great; especially with my shaky arm LOL.

Another small change, hardly noticable, is my swapping of my Last.fm profile. I’ve been slowly adopting “Jimiminar” for every online handle/identity out there and well my last.fm profile was lagging behind. Cue a shiny new profile and I’ve just swapped over the quilts/recent tracks but it should be business as usual…

Here’s trying to find something else to put off work…

The State of Blogs to come…

Hey all, again I have neglected this blog over the last few weeks despite a couple of noteworthy events happening etc. Anyways, I plan to hit the heavy stuff a little later in the evening, but first some lighter stuff.

First things first, I’ve made a few small cosmetic changes to the look of the blog. Probs the most noticable is the header image I’ve added to the, believe it or not, header.  Yeah, no particular reason for the water, I was just looking through this archive of random wallpapers I downloaded a while back, looking for something I could take a slither off to turn into some cool artsy background. Well I went for this ocean scene with dolphins jumping. I almost cropped a dolphin into the header image but thought that would be a little lame, so just kept to the waves.  The colour of the sea being pretty close to the standard background I had before has meant that I have kept the header text white.  I’ve also changed the blog title and added a subtitle, subtly withdrawing one of the many names under which I go.  Wow, who thought you could talk at length about some small changes to a blog header lol.

There is one small problem with the new header image, in the fact that it has a fixed size. I spent some time trying to find a solution to the problem as if the blog is viewed in resolutions of 800×600 or dare I say it, lower then the header image overhangs the header and doesn’t look very pretty indeed. Also due to the limitations of my available monitors, I have not seen it above 1024×768 and I don’t want to think about it – I was suprised it was not more of a common problem, but I gave it a good search but gave up after a few hours. My advice, only view this site in 1024×768 resolution, kthx :D

 

Other changes are to do with the Last.fm quilts sitting in the sidebar.  Thanks to the efforts of the last.fm development team, they’ve now developed multiple sizes for the quilts, so I’ve opted for the smaller ones. It’s ok folks, the pictures swap round so you can still watch in awe and see/read the artists/albums I hold dear.

Also new in this post is my use of Windows Live Writer in composing this blog entry.  I read that version 2 had entered beta phase on the blogger main page, so I’d thought I’d give it a go, hopefully it won’t fuck it up completely.  It has been found to work ok with Blogger so I don’t foresee any problems, so if it works out I will use it more in the future, and possibly make more exciting blog entries, with pictures and definite links, rather than me kinda rambling about something I read/watched but may in fact of dreamt up, mmm.

 

Take it easy…

Last.fm update – 20,000 songs yay!

Hey peeps, I have recently reached a landmark on last.fm music profile. Yep, I’ve past the 20000 song mark so I thought I’d take a quick look at how my charts are doing and make a blog out of it.

I think I remember mentioning in a previous blog when I hit the 10000 song mark and the artists at the top haven’t changed much since. Yep, Coheed and Cambria still grace the top spot by a healthy distance, which is probably fair they are probs my fave band, and statistics prove this lol. I remember at the last milestone, Matthew Good Band were higher, once holding 2nd, but they’ve dropped down a few.

Checking my weekly charts now and again, I am quite proud that I can boast 100+ artists in some weeks, and well that does mean that the not-quote-so-popular artists grow at about the same rate and so there aren’t too many fast climbers.

I have been listening to a crap load of MCS and Sparta, or at least what I thought was a crapload, but they currently sit in positions 31 and 28 respectively.

Some that I am suprised are still up there are the likes of bands like Bad Religion, but that is only because I have pretty much their entire discography and well some songs of theirs get played on my huge “All Music” random playlist that I feed winamp with.

The “Top Tracks” chart I was convinced was bugged as songs like Hundred Reasons’ No Pretending and Coheed’s The Suffering were up there pretty much since I signed up for last.fm and the chart hasn’t really changed that much (again I think it’s the same songs getting played at the same rate). Anyways, while I listened to the commentary to the playoff final featuring Shrewsbury (they lost sadly :() I decided to loop a small song and see what happens. 42 plays of Von Bondies’ Going Down, and I can now confirm that the chart is working, like it always has been, no doubt lol. Yep, that song now sits in third in my all time top tracks (on last.fm).

Contrary to the disappointment of MCS and Sparta’s poor performance in the charts, if the rolling charts are taken a look at – genius idea – it turns out those artists are very close to the top. When I discovered the Juliana Theory, their stuff got some heavy play and that has resulted in them lying in 12th.

Last.fm is a great idea, but one of the few criticisms I have is that the lists aren’t weighted with how much material you have of a particular artist. Now this can’t be implemented using the current online method, but bands like Bad Religion, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden etc are so high simply through attrition rather than geniune plays – don’t get me wrong these artists have a load of good songs, just that sometimes the less-favourable songs get played cos they crop up more on the random playlist, simply due to the greater number of songs that belong to a particular artist. The idea of weighted lists is something I’d like to do in my own little music player if it ever gets off the ground.

Looking forward to the next milestone whichever I decide, whether it be 30000, or I wait till 50000. I’d like to think I could possible hit 50000 by the end of the year, and with my music collection growing and growing we’ll see if Coheed will ever be knocked off the top spot. My music collection stands at about 40Gig atm, probably half of it I know pretty well and will listen to it comfortably, rather than making the effort of checking out a new artist etc.

I’ve just got winamp to add up all the songs and here are the results (lol):
I have 9783 songs (damn so close to 10G), which taking the track lengths makes a total length of 652 hours 3 minutes 55 seconds. That works out at just over 27 and a half days. Wow! I didn’t realise it was that much. Ok, challenge to the masses, who wants to spend the entire of next February listening to every last song in my possession.

I have just under half of those songs of my mp3 player, and I may be slightly bragging that I can pretty much recognise them from the first few seconds of play – maybe someone would like to challenge me on that lol.

It blows my brain, I may have trouble sleeping, what with comprehending how music that is :S
Take it easy
J-Man.

Backlog

Hey peeps, just a quick mention that I have successfully breathed life into this blog before it even started – think of it as being born prematurely and has now been nursed to good health using some kind of blog incubator.

Yeah, so check out all the clutter in the “sidebar”. I wanted to put up my last.fm charts, and discovered these cool “quilt” things as last.fm calls them. They look pretty smart, so I said, “hell yeah! let’s have some of those!”

Anyways, enough with ridiculous medical metaphor, here are some posts I made over the last week or so, there’s a few more to follow but still wrestling in my head if it’s worth it.

Anyways again, here they are enjoy…

Take it easy
J-Man